


Sleepless

by linndechir



Category: Frey & McGray Series - Oscar de Muriel
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25638190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/pseuds/linndechir
Summary: There are some downsides to sharing a bed with McGray. To his own surprise, Frey is quite willing to put up with them anyway.
Relationships: Ian Frey/Adolphus McGray
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	Sleepless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoreyG](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/gifts).



I had almost managed to doze off on the comfortable chaise longue in the upstairs parlour when the door opened with a creak (it never creaked to my knowledge, certainly not when I or Layton opened it) and startled me awake. I was drowsy from the warmth of the fire and the cigar smoke still rising from the ash tray, and of course from earlier exertions that nevertheless hadn’t helped me sleep in my own bed.

In walked – because who else in my house would be up and about in the middle of the night – McGray, though what I hadn’t expected even from him was that he hadn’t bothered to dress at all. He’d thrown a sheet haphazardly around himself instead of slipping into a dressing gown like a halfway civilised person, and as he closed the door behind himself, even that sheet slipped off his shoulder. The sight certainly removed any thoughts of sleep from my mind.

“Did you really come here like that?” I asked, my tone scandalised enough that I could already imagine him mocking me for it. The parlour was only a few steps from my bedroom, where I’d left him snoring and huffing about an hour ago, but the thought still shocked me to the core. One would have thought McGray’s lack of manners and refinement must have stopped being surprising long ago, but he kept finding new ways.

“Nobody’s up but us,” he said as if that were a good enough reason to walk around almost entirely naked, but it was too late at night to argue with him, and Layton had indeed gone to bed hours ago. McGray’s barefooted steps were uncharacteristically soft on the thick carpet as he came over, took my cigar from the ash tray and puffed in a few lungs full of smoke. The blanket was covering less than it revealed, and even if I’d wanted not to look, my gaze would have been drawn to his long, well-muscled legs and his broad chest. For all that he was scruffy and prematurely aged above the neck, his body actually looked like that of a young man, nothing but strong and lean muscles under firm skin. And while his constant stubble irritated my skin and I’d started taking a razor to his cheeks myself every other evening, I’d discovered that I quite liked the thick black hair on his chest, his stomach, his legs. How it felt against mine when he moved on top of me. Of course it helped that it was far softer than his unkempt beard.

The thought of it still made me flush, which McGray of course noticed. Putting down the cigar, he laughed so smugly it made me want to smack him. I’d _known_ he’d only become more irritating once I’d let him in my bed, but I’d assumed he would tease me about what we had done and insult my masculinity even more than before. To my surprise, he’d been surprisingly considerate in that regard. But he was every bit as annoying as expected about just how much of an effect he had on me once I’d let myself indulge in this.

“Och, Percy, ye cannae tell me ye mind seeing me like this,” he said, shoved my legs (admittedly just as bare as his underneath my dressing gown) off the chaise to plant himself there, far closer than propriety ever would have permitted. But then we’d long moved past propriety.

“I would appreciate if you put on your clothes outside of my bedroom, as garish as those clothes are,” I said. Truth be told, McGray was a much nicer sight without the moth-eaten, clownish fabrics he insisted on draping himself in. His hand was warm when he put it on my calf and slid it down to curl his fingers around my ankle. I’d hardly ever thought of myself as dainty, but McGray’s large hands certainly made me look like it at times. I took in a steadying breath.

“What are ye doing up at this hour, hm?” he asked, almost kindly, and that I was in even less of a mood for than another pointless argument. I hadn’t been sleeping well, though certainly not as badly as McGray himself, but I didn’t see any use in talking about it.

“You snore even worse than that time in Lancashire,” I said, and it certainly wasn’t a lie. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for any man to make that much noise while asleep. “I’m starting to believe it’s entirely impossible for both of us to be asleep at the same time.”

Usually it was McGray who got restless and left the bed while I slept – half the time he went home, and privately I was willing admit to some disappointment about waking up and finding him entirely gone from my home. Sometimes he would go to my library instead and read through the night – he’d already started leaving some of his absurd books, though Layton’s impeccable sense of order and tidiness ensured that my home wouldn’t turn into a second dump like any other place McGray spent an extended amount of time in.

McGray’s hand was massaging my calf now – still quite sore and tired from chasing a suspect through half of Old Town the night before, and his touch was surprisingly soothing. He looked like he wanted to say something else – something kind again, or worse, a very reasonable suggestion that maybe we should stop doing this, considering the inconveniences of it all. I had thoroughly considered those myself, repeatedly, and come to the conclusion that for all his other, many irritating flaws, I was willing to put up with Nine-Nails’ horrid sleeping habits in order to enjoy the far less horrid other things he did in my bed.

His hand slid up the inside of my leg, brushing away the silk of my dressing gown until he could touch my thigh, his thumb caressing a tender little spot he’d bitten earlier that night. I swallowed and tried keep quiet, though I couldn’t have said why I bothered after all the undignified sounds McGray had already drawn from me, on that night and on previous ones.

“Come back to bed, lassie.” This time I squirmed, away from his touch or into it I didn’t know. He hardly called me that anymore these days – though “Percy” was, in my opinion, not all that much of an improvement – but he still said it sometimes in these private moments. He didn’t make it sound demeaning anymore, but almost fond. I preferred not to think about it too much, nor about the fact that it bothered me far less than it used to.

“So one of us can go back to not sleeping?” I objected, even as I lay back and relaxed under his hands. He’d leant over me now, one hand still on the inside of my thigh, the other undoing the sash of my dressing gown. Somehow my state of undress made me feel more exposed than if I’d been entirely in the nude.

“It wasnae sleeping I had in mind,” McGray said, his rich voice dropping to that low timbre it got when we were alone these days, and predictably it had exactly the desired effect. On occasion I worried what kind of nonsense McGray might be able to talk me into as long as he used that voice, but then he’d managed to talk me into bed, and I was quite sure that counted as the stupidest thing I had ever agreed to. Though it had some steep competition, and considering that most of the other stupid things Nine-Nails talked me into almost got me killed, I certainly regretted this one least.

The silk brushed over my half-hard cock when he pushed it aside, and I reached up to grab his thick hair, even wilder after a few hours in bed than it was usually.

“For that we hardly need to move,” I said, because the prospect of getting up in my current state was entirely unappealing, especially when the alternative was having McGray on top of me right here and now. He came willingly enough when I pulled him closer, draping his heavy, sleep-warm body over mine. 

“In the sitting room, Percy? My, how naughty,” he teased, and I only resisted the urge to smack him because I would have had to let go of his hair for that. And because I’d discovered a far better way to make him stop talking in that unspeakable, dreadful accent of his.

His mouth tasted mercifully of my Cuban cigars rather than of bad morning breath when I strained my neck to kiss him, and I wondered if maybe he’d indulged in a few puffs for that very reason. I kissed him like it hadn’t been a mere few hours since I’d last done it, but months or years that I’d been waiting for it. And if I’d given him a moment to come up for breath, he might have teased me for it, but as it was, I didn’t let him – I kissed him until he gasped into my mouth, and I kept kissing him as the sheet fell to the ground and he pressed against me with all his weight, and soon we were both panting against each other’s lips desperately, with neither of us in any state for further words. 

That had been the first thing I’d discovered a few weeks ago, when we’d argued in this very parlour after a case, and I’d accused him of chasing after another phantom instead of using his brain for once. We’d both snarled at each other until we’d run out of breath – and then I’d found myself pressed back against a bookshelf with his rough hands framing my face and his lips on mine. He’d tasted of whiskey then and his stubble had scratched me so much my face had been reddened the next morning, but I had discovered that Nine-Nails was an exceptionally good kisser. I would have expected (if I’d allowed myself to indulge in such fantasies) him to be coarse and sloppy about it, like an unwashed drunkard, but instead there was both tenderness and passion to it, and I’d moaned into his mouth when he ran his fingers through my hair and held me close.

He too had kissed me like he’d desired it for a very long time, and every one of our kisses had felt like that since. A part of me – the sensible, reasonable part that knew that the very last thing my life needed was an illegal affair with my coarse and quite possibly delusional colleague – kept hoping that the thrill would finally wear off and I’d come to my senses. A different part of me, the one that hadn’t found much in my life in the recent year that wasn’t miserable and disappointing, was quite relieved that every time he kissed me, I still melted under his hands and lips with such unbridled want and joy.

That first night, we’d managed to stumble back to into my bedroom, and although neither of us had slept that night, we hadn’t left it again until morning. This night we never made it back to bed, but in the end, it was still far more relaxing than my restless sleep would have been.


End file.
